"Maybe I should open the front door."
"Probably." Brian looked down at Richard. "You must have started wearing a hole in the floor. It won't get cleaner than that."
"Sorry."
"That's the seventy-seventh time he's apologised," Brian told Opal. "I've been counting."
"Not that many," said Richard.
Opal asked, "What did Cal say?"
"He hasn't been in, thank God." Brian waved the aerosol, sloshing the contents. "Let's keep him none the wiser."
"Oh, right. He's probably at South Bank."
"And you're here about tonight." Brian pointed at her backpack. "Equipment check, right?"
"Uh-huh. So, you want me to open this door? Cause I'd like to breathe."
"Sorr-" Richard stopped himself.
"I've a better idea," said Brian. "Opal, close up, and we'll go in the back room."
She locked the shop door and tapped the buttons on the door frame. The glass shone with the word CLOSED, in reverse.
"Come on." She took hold of Richard's sleeve. "Let's get out of here."
He picked up the bucket, dropped the sponge inside, and let her lead him out of the room. From behind came the sound of Brian sucking in a breath, followed by the prolonged hissing of the spray. Then Brian was pushing him into the back room and slamming the door shut.
"That is evil, evil stuff. But when it blows away later, it'll take any other stink with it."
Opal tapped Richard on the forehead. "Don't say sorry again."
He grinned and shook his head.
"All right," said Brian. "Take out your gear, and let's take a look."
Around the workshop stood several wooden workbenches with clamps and tools, covered with bits of bicycles and other equipment, not to mention sawdust, metal filings and the heavy smell of oil, currently contaminated with sharp chemical scents leaking through the door. Opal made room on the least cluttered bench, then laid her backpack on top. From the pack, she extracted a pair of goggles and what looked like an ordinary white sweatshirt.
Brian used a clamp to hold a spyball camera in place behind the goggles. Then, even though there were four wallscreens in place, he unfolded a small display and positioned it in front of the goggles. Then he tapped his phone, and the screen lit up, showing a rotating abstract pattern.
"Test pattern. Opal, let's have the blackout cloth."
She rummaged on a shelf, then backed out bearing a folded black cloth. It looked flimsy as she opened it out, spreading it with Brian's help over the workbench, forming a tent over spyball, goggles, and the screen with the test pattern.
"The cloth's one hundred percent opaque," said Brian. "Lightweight but optically dense."
"Oh." Richard looked at the wall screen. "You're testing the goggle's response."
"Bright lad." Brian pointed his phone at a wallscreen, causing it to show numeric data plus a copy of the changing test pattern. "Now we cross-check the calibration."
"It's all right, isn't it?" said Opal.
"Your long-wavelength response is a little skewed." Brian pointed. "So it ain't perfect. But safe enough to use."
"Good."
Richard looked from one to the other. "Use for what?"
"Night run," said Opal.
"Tonight." Brian grinned. "You'll see."
"And the shirt." Opal laid the sweatshirt on the bench, clipped a thin cable to the fabric, and held out the other end of the cable. It had a phone connector. "You got the downloads ready?"
"Uh-huh. How's it working at the moment?"
"All right, I think."
"Let's see."
Opal did something, then star-shaped splashes of sapphire blue and glimmering emerald radiated from the centre of the shirt, pulsing over and over. After a moment, the red outline of a gekrunner began tumbling through extreme gymnastics across the blazing background.
"Wow," said Richard.
"It's so old." Opal looked pleased anyway. "Need something new for tonight."
"I've got just the thing," said Brian, taking the cable. "Switch it off, and I'll run the download."
"Lots of bright colours?"
"Absolutely."
"None of your political slogans?"
"Not for you."
"But no pink, right?"
"Wouldn't dream of it." Brian looked at Richard. "I hope you're memorising all this. If you buy her a present, it can be anything but pink."
"I don't-" His face was warming. "Er…"
"Maybe a pink face is all right."
"You're both stupid," said Opal. "I'm going. I'll be back later."
She started towards the main shop, then stopped, perhaps remembering the noxious aerosol spray, and headed for the back door, which she slammed open, stormed through, and hooked backwards with her heel. "-ing boys," floated back as the door banged shut. "Something I said?" asked Brian.
Bright sunshine. Stinking black bags filled with household refuse, stacked outside houses, waiting for services that would not come until the strike was over. That would mean the union and management sitting down to negotiate, pulling their thumbs out of their butts and talking to each other like actual human beings, abandoning the chip-on-shoulder resentment that was the national pastime. Josh had fought in Zimbabwe, in the former Somalia, and on the ice-covered steppes of Siberia. Every conflict was awful; each had provided glimpses of ordinary people, sometimes working heroically to keep their families or neighbours from starving, often amid surroundings that made Britain a paradise in comparison, every house an imperial palace.
People should have some fucking gratitude.
In a small park with pollution-stained grass, Josh sat beneath a tree, working his phone. His new querybots were popping up a richness of data, hits tagged gekrunning, freerunning or both. Among the surveillance data, none crossmatched exactly with the search argument Opal, but among the myriad currents of microblogs, he found something related – an avatar called OpalKid273, who had posted today: nite run*2nite* ru up 4 it? nu route nu shirt nu trx!!!
Most of her subscribers were in the run_gek_run forum. Hyperlinks had been bidirectional since Semantic Web, but few users realised the ease with which querybots could heuristically backtrack. Philip Broomhall had asked how it was that Josh Cumberland could do more than the police; the truth was that it did take many eyes to search for a missing youth, but Josh had an army of observers – they just weren't human, they were code.
In the gekrunning subculture, night runs were a feature; and tonight's run, according to the forums, was an unofficial part of the Mayor's Festival, set up years ago by some politician called Boris Livingstone, or something – he didn't bother checking. Perhaps, if OpalKid273 was the right person, she would have Richard Broomhall in tow tonight. His best inductivereasoning bots were searching for links between the avatar and real images, ready to notify him in near-realtime if she appeared.
Bringing himself back to the real world, he scanned the park, the stunted trees and rust-patched playground, noting shadows and geometry, angles of movement, and the thirteen people currently here, none paying attention to him or close enough to attack. Then he raised the phone.
"Call Big Tel."
"Hiya, mate," Terry answered in a second. "How's tricks?"
"Usual. Are you free tonight?"
"Had a busy morning, loads of legit fares, plus a little observation job at the same time. Putting my feet up now."
"So if you and your taxi were on standby for a callout, that'd work?"
"Depends where it is you're talking about."
"South Bank, or close to it."
"Easy enough from the Old Kent Road. Give us a buzz and I'll be there. Prep for trouble?"
"A fourteen year-old lad. I might be able to handle him."
"Watch out for him squeezing zits at you. The old pus-in-the-eye trick."
"Jesus, Tel. You were a kid once yourself."